Extremely slow iMac

Hey there!

Thanks for the detailed summary and including an EtreCheck report!

To begin, I'd recommend you uninstall Trusteer. Mac computers do not need any sort of antivirus. Antivirus and similar types of software can interfere with macOS and potentially cause issues. Here are some links that describe Apple's built-in malware protection, which are far superior:

• macOS - Security - Apple
• Protecting against malware in macOS - Apple Support
• Protect your Mac from malware - Apple Support
• Ways to avoid malware and harmful apps on Mac - Apple Support

Next, I'd recommend you use DriveDx to see the heath of your internal solid state drive and hard disk that create your Fusion Drive. When you have the health results, we'll go from there!

-Jack

The HD reports a 79% of its health rating, okay but not great. Not to preach impending doom but that HD is now almost 9 years old which is getting up there for any HD. You have options, first is to take the Fusion Drive out of the equation altogether by adding an external SSD. However you will still be left with a 9 year old obsolete (meaning it cannot run current versions of Mac OS and parts availability is very limited) computer.

The next option is to take advantage of all the great Black Friday deals and replace it. Lots of upsides there, first is performance will exceed the current computer even on its best day. SSD s are now standard with all Macs, a new warranty and of course it’s eligible for AppleCare. Downside is an expense you were not anticipating. However if you buy direct from Apple they have some pretty good financing options available. You can also decide if you want another type of Mac like a Mac Mini, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Studio etc. other options are to buy an Apple refurbished Mac. No downside’s there as they are identical to new, are eligible for AppleCare and can save hundreds of $$$.

in other words don’t focus on fixing an old computer focus on the options now available to you.

Thanks for the reports! Based on the data, I would suggest you setup an external SSD as your startup disk. To learn more, take a look at this user tip: Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community.

If, by chance, the SSD I recommend in the user tip appears out-of-stock at the Apple Store, the OWC Envoy Pro Elektron - OWC is another great option.

-Jack

Didn't see the report as it's in greyed out text and I have problem with low contrast.

You're running Trusteer and there is no reason to ever install or run any 3rd party "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus, VPN or security apps on your Mac.  This documents describe what you need to know and do in order to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community and Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support.  

There are no known viruses, i.e. self propagating, for Macs.  There are, however, adware and malware which require the user to install although unwittingly most of the time thru sneaky links, etc.   

Anti Virus developers try to group all types as viruses into their ad campaigns of fear.  They do a poor job of the detecting and isolating the adware and malware.  Since there are no viruses these apps use up a lot of system resources searching for what is non-existent and adversely affect system and app performance.

There is one app, Malwarebytes, which was developed by a long time contributor to these forums and a highly respected member of the computer security community, that is designed solely to seek out adware and known malware and remove it.  The free version is more than adequate for most users.  

I would uninstall Trusteer according to the developer's instructions.

Your read write speed appears to be low:

Write speed: 292 MB/s

Read speed: 889 MB/s

The HDD portion of the Fusion drive is a 5400 rpm model which is the slowest Apple offers. I'm not sure this is the primary cause of your issues but something to consider.

Thanks for that report! The SSD looks good. There should be a second entry in DriveDx for the hard disk. Could you upload that report as well?

-Jack

I understand, the bottleneck on many Macs were the hard drives, in the MMs they used slower hard disks. All current Macs (since about 2020 I believe) use SSDs which are orders of magnitude faster than their HD counterparts. If you have never had a computer with a true SSD then I'd recommend looking at some of the many benchmarks that measure the differences in speed. And please remember a 2015 iMac is not 3-4 years old (if that is what you meant), it's close to 9 years old now!

Another advantage of SSDs is they have no moving parts which translates into improved reliability as well as speed.

If you are saying you may want to move away from Macs, I totally get it however well the alternatives leave a lot to be desired too.

Best of luck.

You should have done a Time machine copy on a extern harddrive in 2015.

And reinstall your imac after some years!

And the,"pretty long run of mac back luck" vill be gone!

steveh46a wrote:

#1 - The two Mac Minis we have owned were slow right out of the box and I'd rank them below the Performas as the worst Macs we've owned (and our first Mac was a Mac Plus).

#2 - The current iMac's performance degraded within 3-4 years and has only gotten worse since.

That makes 3 Mac desktops in a row that have been disappointing, to phrase it generously. I don't look forward to finding out whether we'll be disappointed again.

#1 - did the two Minis have SSD drives or hard drives? If hard drives were they 5400 rpm drives. Also how much RAM did you get with them.

#2 - have you installed and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac?

Download and run Etrecheck. Be sure to give it Full Disk access before running.

Copy and paste the results into your reply. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support  to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and use the Additional Text button to paste the report in your reply.

Then we can evaluate the report to see if we can determine the cause of the problem.

Well it seems you have had a pretty long run of Mac back luck. Sorry that has been your experience.